Before and after: Sidewalk on Marshall Avenue, St. Paul. Source: Bike Walk Twin Cities

If you ever doubted whether a small investment in biking and walking could have a large impact, here is your proof.

The last transportation law, SAFETEA-LU, provided four communities with four years of funding to build an infrastructure network for nonmotorized transportation (a fancy way of saying “sidewalks and bike paths”). It wasn’t a lot of money — $25 million each to Columbia, Missouri; Marin County, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.

The program built 333 miles of on-street biking and walking routes, 23 of off-street facilities, and 5,727 bike parking spaces in the four municipalities — not to mention some outreach and education. Not bad, especially when you consider that $100 million would only buy about five miles of new four-lane highway in an urbanized area [PDF].

Total two-hour bicycling and walking counts for all pilot communities, fall 2007 and fall 2010. Source: FHWA Report to the U.S. Congress on the Outcomes of the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program

FHWA summed up the results in its report on the outcomes of the pilot program [PDF]:

• An estimated 32 million driving miles were averted between 2007 and 2010. It appears that the numbers keep climbing — half of that savings happened just in 2010, the last year of the pilot, when an estimated 16 million miles were walked or bicycled that would have otherwise been driven.
• The four pilot areas saw an average increase of 49 percent in the number of bicyclists and a 22 percent increase in the number of pedestrians between 2007 and 2010.
• In each community, a greater percentage of pedestrian and bicycling trips included transit in 2010 than in 2007.
• Despite increases in biking and walking, fatal bike/ped crashes held steady or decreased in all of the communities.
• The pilot communities saved an estimated 22 pounds of CO2 in 2010 per person or a total of 7,701 tons — the equivalent of saving over a gallon of gas per person.
• Many people tried bicycling for the first time in their adults lives or ever.

Interestingly, average one-way trip distances by foot and by bicycle fell in some places, probably since more people were taking more trips without cars, instead of only walking and biking for exercise. And bike/ped trips including transit went way up.

Percentage of pedestrian and bicyclist trips that included transit for Columbia and Marin County.

The pilot results were released today, the first day of National Bike Month. (Though Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood notes that when he was a kid, “every month was bike month.”)

The FHWA report is full of data showing how a small down payment on active transportation can lead — quickly — to dramatic improvements in air quality, traffic levels, and public health.

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a major supporter of the pilot program, called it a “raging success.”

“These are not all typical, bike-friendly cities,” said Marianne Fowler, RTC’s senior vice president of federal relations. ”These four communities represent a solid cross-section of America. Even in places like Sheboygan, which doesn’t have urban density, has cold winters, and has had almost no experience with biking and walking initiatives in the past, locals have rapidly become champions because they have seen the real-time effects, the actual benefits to their community.”

Fowler went on to say that with the evidence now in black and white before them, Congressional representatives must now recognize that continued investment in walking in biking represents terrific value for American taxpayers.

“The incongruous thing is that Congress, with a simple, low-cost solution to so many transportation problems right here in front of them, can’t see the people for the cars,” she said.

The longer you examine Andrew Cuomo's plan for a Tappan Zee Bridge without transit, the worse it looks. Photo: Angel Franco/Newsday

Demand for TIFIA loans was high; 26 letters of interest were submitted requesting a total of $13 billion, far more than was available. Excluding a pie-in-the-sky submission for a “pod train superhighway,” New York’s application for $2 billion to help build the new Tappan Zee Bridge was the largest request.

Even so, many expected the project to get a nod from the feds. After all, the Tappan Zee was one of only 14 infrastructure projects nationwide to be chosen for expedited review by the Obama administration, a sign of special favor.

Instead, five projects were invited to move forward in the TIFIA application process. Notably, some of the projects chosen include bus rapid transit components, as in Colorado’s US 36 project, or joint carpool/toll lanes, as in Northern Virginia’s I-95 project. In contrast, the Tappan Zee replacement project would double the width of the existing bridge and open all that space to single occupancy vehicles.

New York could reapply for next year’s round of TIFIA loans, said U.S. DOT spokesperson Bill Adams, but won’t receive any this year. Without credit assistance from the feds, financing the Tappan Zee Bridge gets that much more difficult. TIFIA loans currently offer a 3.15 percent interest rate. Thruway Authority loans, according to analyst Charles Komanoff, average about 4.5 percent. On a $2 billion loan, that’s a sizable increase in the price tag for the project.

The difference would likely have to come from higher tolls, either for drivers crossing the Tappan Zee or for those on the rest of the Thruway system. According to Komanoff’s calculations, the difference in toll prices without the low-interest loan will be sizable. In the best-case scenario — one without any cost overruns and in which high tolls don’t scare off drivers — the TIFIA rejection will push tolls from $10.90 to $12.30. In a case with higher construction costs than estimated and lower traffic levels than projected, tolls would rise from $18.40 with the TIFIA loan to $20.50 without.

The Thruway Authority did not respond to a Streetsblog inquiry about how the loan rejection will affect its plans to finance the new bridge.

Why was the Tappan Zee’s application rejected? Adams wouldn’t say, except to note that there was more demand for projects than dollars to distribute.

But maybe it’s the fact that local leaders, including the county executives, state senators and mayors on both sides of the bridge, have been loudly demanding the restoration of transit. Maybe it’s because without that transit, the Tappan Zee does nothing to meet the state and nation’s sustainability goals, which are a major selection criteria in the TIFIA process. Maybe it’s because the state’s misleading and inadequate environmental impact statement leaves the Tappan Zee project open to lawsuits. Maybe it’s because the Cuomo administration still hasn’t told anyone how they plan to pay for the rest of the bridge, and the total price tag of the project changes based on who’s asking.

Whatever the reason, it looks like the number of people asking questions about the Cuomo plan for the Tappan Zee just keeps growing.

Former Transportation Secretaries Mary Peters, James Burnley, Rodney Slater, Samuel Skinner, and Norman Mineta participated in the conference that produced a report and communications strategy. Photo from Miller Center.

If 80 percent of the American people agree that federal infrastructure investment will create jobs, and two-thirds say better infrastructure is important, why is the call for a robust transportation bill being made in whispers? And why is Congress already two and a half years late in producing one?

There are many political reasons — from the earmark ban to wariness of “Bridge to Nowhere” projects to the anti-spending frenzy that’s taken over the House — that it’s been a tough time to pass a transportation bill. But five former U.S. Secretaries of Transportation have said that the voice for change has to be louder. They released a report yesterday, with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, calling for a new communications strategy. (See “Is Transpo Funding Fundamentally a PR Problem? Five Ex-DOT Chiefs Discuss,” Dec. 2, 2011, for more on the conference the report is based on.)

The communications strategy is both visionary and tactical. Its more nuts-and-bolts elements include social networking campaigns and election-year news hooks to bring attention to the issue and make candidates talk about infrastructure.

The strategy is aimed at both leaders and the public. After all, both say they want better transportation infrastructure (and the jobs that will be created to build it), but no one wants to pay for it. The American people haven’t woken up to that contradiction. “Seventy-one percent of voters oppose an increase in the federal gas tax,” the Miller Center report says, “with majorities likewise opposing a tax on foreign oil, the replacement of the gas tax with a per-mile-traveled fee, and the imposition of new tolls to increase federal transportation funding.”

That’s a pretty comprehensive list of funding mechanisms, and the public has rejected them all. Part of a communications strategy, therefore, has to explain to the American people – not just about transportation but about all government services – that you can’t get something for nothing.

New Haven won federal support for its plan to tear down the Route 34 Expressway. But the city is on a course to build something similar in its place. Photo: CNU.org

The city’s plan to dismantle about one mile of the road in 2016 was sold as a way to open up 11 acres of downtown land to development and increase walkability and connectivity. But local advocates are sounding the alarm that it’s starting to look like 1960 all over again. Instead of reclaiming urban fabric from car infrastructure, New Haven is dangerously close to replacing one urban freeway with another urban freeway.

Last week an independent group called the New Haven Urban Design League issued a scathing, 30-page report titled “A Highway Rebuilt, Not Removed” [PDF]. In it, the League — one of the biggest proponents of the highway teardown — says the city of New Haven should scrap its current plans to build a partially grade-separated, limited access roadway and begin the process from scratch, with a public planning process.

“Essentially, the highway is being re-configured and re-built rather than removed,” the report states. “We don’t feel that $30 million in public funds … should be used to create a plan that fails.”

The problems with the existing plan are many, the League says. The plan contains two four-lane roads, less than a block apart — an “eight-lane monstrosity,” according to Norm Garrick, a transportation specialist at the University of Connecticut.

The plan doesn’t add any cross streets, negating any claims to improving the street grid. Furthermore, much of the new roadway design would be sunken below grade, portions of which the League claims could create an “even more formidable barrier to connectivity than the previous formation.”

The idea to tear down Route 34 began with a push from the Urban Design League in 2004. After a series of public meetings, the organization, working with other advocacy groups, was able to win city support for the tear-down concept, plus $5 million for engineering studies. But the actual planning phase was held up by a peculiarity of Connecticut state law. The planning process had to be put on hold for a year and a half while the regulation was revised.

Meanwhile, Carter Winstanley, a prominent developer and owner of a local biomedical firm, hired a design team and developed a plan of his own. The plan centered around the construction of a large office building to house his firm — complete with a 800-space parking garage (which would add to a 2,600-space structure nearby) — in the existing highway trench. At first the city said it was out of the question, said Anstress Farwell, president of the Urban Design League. After all, the public had been completely left out of the planning process.

But city officials changed their tune changed when the TIGER program launched and the feds started offering millions for “shovel-ready projects.” The city took up the Winstanley plan and won $16.5 million to make it a reality.

Farwell was surprised that the Winstanley plan, with all its shortcomings, won the highly competitive grant.

“There’s an astounding amount of parking in this area,’” she said. “We thought, ‘How could they even look at a project that has an 800-car garage attached to a 2,600 car garage?’”

Meanwhile, City Hall has been less than responsive to public misgivings about the plan. A safe streets resolution proposed by community members met with “vehement opposition” from local leaders, according to the report.

The Urban Design League says even without eliminating the Winstanley building and parking garage, the plan could still be salvaged if “adequate traffic, transit, market and environmental studies” are conducted and the remaining portion is reworked with the project’s original goals in mind. But time is running out. Under the terms of the grant, the city needs to obligate the funds for the project by September of this year.

“This is public land. I think you really have to engage in a public process, you really have to work with the intelligent desires of the public when they come out to public meetings,” said Farwell. “We’re not going to have this opportunity again.”

Ford's Sync system allows integration of many potentially distracting devices into the dashboard console. Image: U.S. DOT

The new guidelines would seem to be of special comfort to pedestrians, cyclists, and even motorcyclists who have long observed the trend of cars getting safer for their occupants but more dangerous for everyone else. “When automakers employ ‘Infotainment Systems Engineers,’ like Ford does,” says BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus, “that should raise a red flag.”

Automakers are scrambling to find newer and fancier ways for drivers to stay connected behind the wheel, ostensibly to meet consumer demand. At the most recent Consumer Electronics Expo, Mercedes-Benz debuted their in-dash system that supports some Facebook functions even while the car is in motion, in what Maus calls a “disturbing trend”:

Automakers, scared that their vehicles can’t compete with consumers’ growing adoration of smartphones and other devices, now offer all sorts of phone-like conveniences on-board. The result? More distraction, more crashes, more deaths and injuries.

The National Transportation Safety Board had already recommended a set of anti-distracted driving measures, including outlawing the use of any electronic device — hands-on or hands-free — while driving. But the new guidelines, which are voluntary and unenforceable, represent only a cautious next step in making it harder to drive distracted. Gone is the ban on hands-free devices, for example, and the new rules would only apply to built-in electronics, leading some to expect that drivers would find after-market ways to stay connected.

Andrew Cuomo inspecting the Tappan Zee Bridge in 2010. Since then, Cuomo has taken transit off the plans for the bridge. Now, costs for the highway-only bridge appear to be rising again. Photo: Angel Franco/Newsday

As part of an application for a $2 billion federal loan to help pay for a replacement Tappan Zee Bridge that would double the width of the current bridge, the Cuomo administration has put forward a new and much-higher estimate of the project’s cost: $6 billion. That’s $800 million higher than previous press reports had stated, and $1.4 billion more than the state put forward in its draft environmental impact statement. The loan application also suggests that the administration will use toll revenues to repay the feds, meaning potentially huge toll hikes for Tappan Zee drivers without providing any effective transit option as an alternative.

The $2 billion loan application, first reported by Bloomberg News and provided as a PDF by Gannett, is for funding from the federal TIFIA program. A TIFIA loan must cover no more than 33 percent of the the total project cost. A $2 billion loan application therefore requires a total project cost of $6 billion or more.

The Cuomo administration’s application states: “TIFIA loan assistance of $2.0 billion is requested, representing up to one-third of the assumed total project cost of $6.0 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars.”

Nancy Singer, a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration, confirmed that a $2 billion loan could only fund a project that cost $6 billion or more, though she wouldn’t speak to the particulars of the Tappan Zee Bridge. Neither the New York State DOT nor the governor’s office has responded to Streetsblog inquiries about the loan application.

Early press reports put the cost of the bridge at $5.2 billion, while the DEIS had the cost at $4.64 billion. The Cuomo administration is telling Washington that the Tappan Zee Bridge could cost between $800 million to $1.4 billion more than it’s disclosing to the public in its environmental review.

It is possible, as Klopott notes, that the new federal transportation bill currently debated in Congress would increase the maximum TIFIA loans can cover to 49 percent of the total project cost. If that provision passes — and with the House of Representatives pursuing an extremely radical bill, signs from Washington don’t currently point to a speedy resolution there — it would be possible for a $2 billion loan to be granted for a bridge that costs less than $6 billion. The state’s application, however, was made under the existing law.

It is not clear, however, whether toll hikes would be used to fund the entire bridge project, or just to pay back this $2 billion loan.  An analysis by Charles Komanoff found that tolls would likely have to be set at $16 or higher to pay for a $5.2 billion bridge. The math would work out to be roughly the same with a $6 billion bridge and cheaper borrowing.

If the state isn’t willing to shoulder $16 tolls, though, that leaves the same funding gap as before. So far, the administration has only publicly discussed financing plans, like using union pensions to pay for the bridge, but not the funding streams that would pay back lenders.

Even as the state applies for federal funding, it remains unclear how much the bridge will really cost and who’s ultimately going to pay for it. Nor will anyone explain why the projected costs for bus rapid transit quintupled under the Cuomo administration. The state’s public outreach offices have been shuttered and stakeholder meetings cancelled. The state continues to show a total lack of transparency around its plans for the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Boundary Street in Beaufort, South Carolina will be transformed from a suburban arterial to a walkable, bikeable main street, thanks to a $12.6 million TIGER III grant. This project was one of 22 awarded funding in this round that will benefit cyclists and pedestrians. Photo: WSAV

Of the 46 projects chosen for funding, 22 incorporate some aspect of bike and pedestrian accessibility, and nine of them make cyclists or pedestrians the primary beneficiary, said Kartik Sribarra of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Among the more important active transportation projects to win the nod from U.S. DOT in this round of funding is Chicago’s bike-share system. RTC also highlights Beaufort, South Carolina’s success in securing a $12.6 million grant to improve the walkability on a major thoroughfare.

Currently, the town’s main street, Boundary Street, is a visually unappealing, car-oriented suburban-style arterial. But TIGER III money will help convert the street into a landscaped, walkable, bikeable boulevard.

This project is the result of a great deal of planning and investment by the local community. According to U.S. DOT, the city of Beaufort has adopted a new land use plan and form-based codes, and they’ve approved a one-cent sales tax increase to pay for transportation projects.

TIGER III money will also provide for Main Street revitalization projects in Buffalo, New York; St. Albans, Vermont and American Falls, Idaho.

St. Albans is a second-time winner, having received funding for walkability projects in the second round of TIGER funding. This rural town in Vermont’s northwest corner won just over $2 million for a streetscape project in North Main Street. The project will include new sidewalks and bike infrastructure, linking downtown to a 19-mile pedestrian network and a 26-mile bicycle trail.

In addition, Stamford, Connecticut won funding to improve pedestrian access to its transit center. TIGER III funding will also help build sidewalks and a bike trail on Snake Road in Florida’s Big Cypress Reservation.

RTC’s Sribarra says U.S. DOT’s prioritization of active transportation projects is good for everyone, whether they travel by car or bike.

“A million dollars is a drop in the bucket of the price of a road,” he said. “But for this same million dollars, scores of people every day will benefit from a safer, healthier commute, which also has the benefit of getting cars off the road during peak periods.”

Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council said on the Switchboard blog that the environmental merits of the projects selected for funding under TIGER have turned him from a skeptic to a believer:

My initial concern about this program [was] that Federal Highways might dominate the competition and in spite of laudable criteria some ‘highways to nowhere’ might get funded. We don’t need more waste in the transportation program. I’m happy to eat my words in public now (I’ve already done so with friends at DOT), as the Transportation Department announces its third round of investments under this impressive program.

St. Louis' Arch grounds will get better pedestrian connectivity across I-70, thanks to a $20 million TIGER grant. Image: NextSTL

If you live in Stamford, Connecticut and your walk to the train station gets safer next year, you can thank USDOT’s TIGER grant program. Or when your hometown of American Falls, Idaho suddenly gets complete streets downtown, accommodating people on foot, on bikes, on buses, in cars, and in wheelchairs, encouraging local shopping. Or when you realize that traffic congestion between Olympia and Tacoma, Washington has eased, not by adding lanes but by installing intelligent technology to manage traffic and encourage ridesharing.

All 46 of the TIGER III award grantees have been announced now, and there are sure to be more communities disappointed than excited, given that there were 828 applications totaling $14.1 billion and USDOT had only $511 million to give. The money went to 33 states and Puerto Rico. USDOT was careful to include many rural projects, though those tend to be the smallest grant awards. Twenty of the 46 projects are in rural areas, but they only amount to about 30 percent of the total outlay.

All in all, 48 percent of the projects fund roadwork, with about a quarter of those funds paying for complete streets treatments like the one in American Falls. Another 29 percent goes to transit – a far better shake for transit than generally comes of the normal Congressional appropriations process. Twelve percent went to ports, 10 percent for freight rail, and two percent for passenger rail.

LaHood praised the job creation potential of the funds, saying in a statement, “When President Obama said, ‘We can’t wait,’ to take action to put people back to work, DOT took that to heart. And, with the announcement of our third round of TIGER funding, we’re making it clear: we didn’t wait.”

Indeed, he said work is currently underway on 33 planning projects and 58 capital projects from the first two rounds of TIGER funding.

The biggest four projects this time around, each receiving $20 million, were the Chicago Blue Line renewal and city bike-share, HOT lanes for a heavily congested stretch of I-95 in Northern Virginia, improved and safer flow of vehicular and pedestrian traffic in St. Louis, and support for a TIFIA loan to extend express lanes on SR-91 in Southern California. Most of these projects have total costs that make the $20 million contribution look like a drop in the bucket – the SR-91 project alone will cost $1.3 billion. TIGER takes a bigger bite out of the Chicago project, whose total cost is significantly lower than the others at $64.6 million.

LaHood praised his department for getting the announcement out months ahead of schedule, but it stands to reason: The initial February deadline had become an end-of-year mandate, and LaHood was being called a Grinch for ruining department employees’ holiday breaks by making them work on TIGER applications during break. Apparently they hustled to get them done in time to relax with their families a little over the holiday.

The full list of projects, with descriptions, is available on the U.S. DOT website [PDF].

Chicago's bike-share program was one TIGER III winner. Photo: Peopling Places

Chicago’s Blue Line and bike-share are splitting a $20 million award. The Blue Line work will eliminate slow zones on 3.6 miles of deteriorated track between downtown and O’Hare Airport. The money will also help jumpstart Chicago’s first large-scale bike sharing program, set to launch in the spring with 3,000 bikes.

TIGER isn’t exclusively for non-automobile focused projects, but its focus on innovation and regional significance has led to significant funding for transit and active transportation. For example, in addition to the $20 million for the projects in Chicago, Illinois also netted $13.85 million for a regional multi-modal transportation center adjacent to the new Amtrak high-speed rail station in Alton — as well as roadwork on Illinois Route 83.

Below is the best compilation we’ve seen so far, courtesy of Larry Ehl at Transportation Issues Daily.

We’ll bring you the full list when it’s published tomorrow.

Photo: The North Iowa Journal

The traffic crash and fatality rates in this country are indeed at historic lows, especially given the staggering amount of driving Americans do on a yearly basis. In 2005, the most recent year to have shown an increase in highway fatalities, there were 14.7 traffic deaths for every 100,000 U.S. residents. In 2010, that number had fallen to 10.7 deaths, a difference of approximately 10,000 fewer fatalities annually. (USDOT measures the death rate not by population but by vehicle miles traveled, also showing a dramatic improvement, from 1.5 deaths per million VMT to 1.1 over the same period. Interestingly, while total VMT rose in 2010, per-capita driving declined.)

The news was grimmer for people outside of a car than for drivers and passengers. Improved motor vehicle safety features were likely a factor in the lower fatality rate, according to the Boston Herald, but those same features mean little to non-occupants. After several progressively safer years, 2010 saw a 4.2 percent increase in pedestrian deaths—to 4,280, a difference of 171 human lives—and a whopping increase of about 11,000 nonfatal injuries. Bicycle deaths decreased 1.6 percent, but bike injury rates didn’t change at all. Clearly, safety gains for motorists have not extended to more vulnerable road users.

Furthermore, while it is certainly good news that traffic is claiming thousands fewer lives each year, 32,885 is a staggering number. It is roughly equivalent to 70 full jumbo jets crashing and leaving no survivors, or equal to the population of Juneau, AK or Dover, DE. There is enormous room for improvement: The fatality rate in the U.S. still pales beside leading countries like Japan (3.85 traffic deaths per 100,000) and Germany (4.5), which also happen to have much lower rates of driving than the U.S.

Arrows indicate direction of change since previous year. Source: BTS, NHTSA

In an effort to further reduce the number of roadway deaths and injuries, National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland announced at yesterday’s press conference that his agency was introducing several new measures to track distracted driving. NHTSA introduced a new metric, to be included in future highway fatality reports, called “distraction-affected crashes.” This figure differs slightly from the current “distraction-related” category — for example, “cell phone present in vehicle” will no longer count under the new metric, while “dialing a cell phone” will.

NHTSA will also initiate a two-year naturalistic study of driver behavior to clarify the relationship between distracted driving and road injuries, fitting 2,000 cars with cameras and other equipment. Ideally, the results of that study will be able to draw a straight line between driver behavior and non-occupant injuries.

The NHTSA could take many more steps to better understand what is causing the decline in traffic deaths and determine how to make the U.S. a global leader in street safety. Fewer Americans are dying on the roads than 20 or even 10 years ago, and that could be a reflection of any number of factors: improvements in emergency care, car safety features, road design, driver behavior, or changes in the amount Americans drive. We can’t allow ourselves to become complacent in the face of 32,885 deaths that might have been prevented.

Multiple protests have been held in Portland in opposition to the CRC Bridge project, which Federal Transit Administration officials yesterday praised as "forward-leaning." Photo: Stop the CRC

But many state and regional transportation agencies continue to operate as if it were still the 1980s, when highway budgets were flush, gas was cheap and the destructive impacts of auto-centric planning were less well understood.

It’s especially discouraging to see those old-fashioned attitudes prevailing in greater Portland, which enjoys a reputation as the country’s most progressive transportation city. The fact that the $3-plus billion mega-bridge project known as the Columbia River Crossing remains a regional transportation priority is a testament to the pervasive grip of highway-building interests.

Just yesterday, this “highway boondoggle in disguise” passed another milestone when it was given environmental clearance from U.S. DOT, opening the way for land acquisition and construction. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced yesterday that the project has been granted a “record of decision,” a disappointing endorsement from an administration that has made “livability” a key issue.

Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff even praised the project as a break from carbon-intensive traditions, saying, “This is the type of forward-leaning project that will greatly benefit the entire region well into the future.”

It’s true that the project does include a transit component. About $800 million will be spent on light rail through this corridor between Portland and suburban Vancouver, Washington. But project opponents like David Osborn, head of the community group Stop the CRC, point out that a much greater share of the money will be spent widening the highway to 10 lanes and adding a number of interchanges. This is fundamentally at odds with Portland’s professed emphasis on environmental stewardship and sustainability, Osborn told Streetsblog in April.

“If we build transportation infrastructure that supports single-occupancy-vehicles, it will increase low-density sprawl,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of opposition to this project in the community.”

Joe Cortright, a consultant with Impresa and one of the project’s most vocal opponents, says he is disappointed but not surprised by the U.S. DOT announcement. “This has been clearly in the pipeline for some time,” he said. “It reflects kind of the internal consensus of the state DOTs.”

But he added that the federal government has yet to award the CRC any funding — and the project plan assumes a $1.2 billion contribution from the federal government. Nor has either state DOT committed any money, he said. He added that legal challenges to the environmental impact statement were likely forthcoming.

So the fight certainly isn’t over yet in Portland.

These numbers, from the Office of Management and Budget, indicate that the Highway Account of the Highway Trust fund is in better fiscal shape than previously thought. So why are senators still chasing after $12 billion? Source: OMB

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and his Finance Committee have been looking high and low for a $12 billion patch to fund the transportation reauthorization bill that passed the Senate EPW Committee a few weeks ago. According to Politico’s transportation reporters, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, has already rejected several of Baucus’s ideas.

But the question is not only, “How will we get the money?” It’s also, “How much money do we need?” The dollar amount the Senate is seeking could lavish more money than necessary on roads while leaving transit out in the cold.

The EPW Committee wants to hold transportation spending at current levels (plus inflation), which they estimate at $109 billion over two years. Receipts into the Highway Trust Fund (from gas taxes and other vehicle fees) aren’t expected to be sufficient to pay that bill. The Congressional Budget Office told the committee that the HTF is $12 billion short of the amount needed to fully fund the bill. That amount is destined just for highways, based on projections that the Mass Transit Account will be solvent through the end of 2013 – in fact, ending that year with a $1.5 billion balance.

But last month, the two top members of the Senate Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over transit, asked FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff for confirmation of those numbers [PDF]. Rogoff replied that he, in fact, found another set of numbers to be more accurate [PDF].

In August, the Office of Management and Budget completed a “Mid-Session Review” (MSR), using updated estimates. Rogoff explains the OMB’s findings:

Assuming baseline levels of FTA contract authority and obligation limitations, our latest MSR estimates are that the MTA will have a $2.4 billion cash balance (positive) at the end of fiscal year 2012, but a $1.9 billion cash shortfall (negative) at the end of fiscal year 2013. Larger cash shortfalls are also projected for fiscal years 2014 through 2017 assuming baseline funding levels…

The FTA recognizes that minimum levels of funding are needed in the MTA at any time of the year to avoid having insufficient funds to cover potential outlays. For the MTA this “prudent balance” level is $1 billion, so the MTA will need $2.9 billion ($1 billion prudent balance plus $1.9 billion cash shortfall) for fiscal year 2013 to maintain this level.

While it remains above this “prudent balance” level, it has sufficient cash to cover one month’s projected outlays. If the account balance were to drop below this level, the Department would begin its notification process to grantees because the account would be at risk of having insufficient funds to cover potential outlays.

The OMB also finds that the highway account will have a $3.9 billion shortfall at the end of 2013 [see above].

These numbers are a world away from the CBO estimates. The OMB shows more parity between highways’ needs and transit’s needs, while lowering the total funding hurdle by more than half.

I wondered if part of the enormous inflation of highway needs in the CBO report was the product of a larger need for a “prudent balance,” but an FHWA spokesperson told me they don’t have the discretion to control the balance the way FTA does. According to him, the FHWA doesn’t maintain a “prudent balance” at all.

So what’s the proper amount that the Senate needs to find to plug the hole in the bill? Neither estimate seeks to leave any money in the bank, but just to end the year 2013 at the break-even point. CBO says the magic number is $12 billion to end 2013 without bankrupting the HTF. OMB says it’s $1.9 billion for transit plus $3.9 billion for highways, equaling $5.8 billion, plus the $1 billion prudent balance the FTA wants to maintain, for a total of $6.8 billion.

But one Congressional aide told me the Banking Committee isn’t looking to lower the total, but rather add the $2.9 billion for transit on top of the $12 billion Finance is already looking for. After all, no one wants to appear to be taking anything away from highways.

That’s one way to do it. But using the most accurate set of numbers has to be the best policy, not to mention the one easiest for Finance to achieve — and for deficit hawks to approve.

The Highway Account has no divine right to $12 billion that may greatly exceed the actual deficit. There’s no need to overfund road-building at a time of extreme fiscal discipline. So why haven’t advocates of the Senate bill been trumpeting the results of the OMB report and its finding that the bill will cost far less than projected, giving the Finance Committee an easier job to do?

Two weeks ago, every option for reconstructing the Tappan Zee Bridge posted on the state's project website showed both a bus line and a rail line. Now, all the documents showing transit across the bridge have disappeared. Image: Tappan Zee Bridge website, captured by Streetsblog

Call it the mystery of the missing transit. One of the state’s biggest transit projects, in the works for nearly a decade, was canceled overnight and no one will explain why, or even claim responsibility for the decision.

Two weeks ago, each of the four alternatives for replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge included a new Metro-North commuter rail line and some form of bus rapid transit. The design, which widened the highway but also included a major expansion of transit in Rockland and Westchester counties, was the product of nine years of study and a whopping 280 public meetings. The whole process was thoroughly documented, with information about each alternative — along with hundreds of pages generated by the environmental review process and public commentary — easily found on the state’s Tappan Zee Bridge website.

On October 11, the Federal Highway Administration and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office announced that the bridge project had been selected for expedited federal review. The project they promised to speed up, however, was vastly different from the one vetted over the course of nearly a decade. The new plan for the bridge promised to add space for car traffic but left the transit component to be completed at an unspecified future date. Transit advocates are skeptical that the commuter rail and BRT lines will ever see the light of day.

At the same time that transit was removed from the plan, the state expunged from the public record all information about the nine-year public process and the four design alternatives that included rail and bus lines. The Tappan Zee website no longer displays the documents it did two weeks ago, as blogger Cap’n Transit first noted. The endorsement of transit, the extensive environmental analysis, the history of public input — all of it gone, replaced by three short documents chronicling the brief history of the transit-free project.

So much for transparency. Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said she couldn’t recall a single example of this kind of wholesale document scrubbing.

In addition to hiding the history of the Tappan Zee project, the state and federal agencies in charge won’t disclose how they reached the decision to build the bridge without transit.

When the Cuomo administration touted the selection of the Tappan Zee for expedited federal review, the announcement failed to mention that the project being expedited had also been utterly transformed. And it remains unclear who ultimately decided to abandon the transit component. Some media outlets reported that the federal government made the call; others implied it was the state. The New York Times reported that federal officials pushed for the transit elements to be postponed, while Transportation Nation noted that Cuomo hadn’t invited the MTA to his meetings on the Tappan Zee Bridge for months.

When Streetsblog asked the U.S. Department of Transportation which agency decided to remove transit from the bridge’s design and why, they directed us to the New York State DOT, which the feds said had “rescoped the project.” NYS DOT told us that the matter was being handled by the governor’s press office. Inquiries to Cuomo’s office were not answered.

A document jointly produced by the Federal Highway Administration, the New York State Department of Transportation and the New York State Thruway Authority provides the only public explanation for removing transit from the bridge design [PDF]. The joint explanation reads, in full:

In 2011, while advancing financial analysis, it was determined that funding for the corridor project (bridge replacement, highway improvements, and new transit service) was not possible at this time. The financing of the crossing alone, however, was considered affordable. Therefore, it was determined that the scope of the project should be limited, and efforts to replace the Hudson River crossing independent of the transit and highway elements should be advanced.

The aforementioned financial analysis, however, is not available on the Tappan Zee website. Why did the agencies consider it affordable and cost-effective to build a highway-only bridge — projected to cost $5.2 billion — while an estimated $1 billion more for bus rapid transit lines was too much? It’s impossible to tell.

Slevin called the statement “ten years of study and consensus erased by three sentences.”

One of the region’s most important transit projects was effectively canceled overnight, upending years of preparation for a high-quality transit option between Rockland and Westchester counties that could shape development, improve commutes, and decrease traffic congestion. New York residents deserve to know why the plans changed and who’s responsible, but so far the Cuomo and Obama administrations have denied them an explanation.

LaHood, flanked by NYC Transpo Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, lauds the NACTO bike guide. Photo: Darren Flusche, League of American Bicyclists

If Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has anything to say about it, every transportation planner in the country should have a shiny new engineering guide on his or her bookshelf.

It’s been six months since the National Association of City Transportation Officials released the Urban Bikeways Design Guide in an online format. Yesterday, LaHood was among the first to hold the print edition in his very-excited hands, providing a ringing endorsement for its widespread adoption.

It would have been a bittersweet moment, coming only hours after LaHood told reporters that he would be a one-term transportation secretary – if the attendees had heard the news by then, which most of them hadn’t.

Before the most bike-friendly transportation secretary in U.S. history took the podium, another groundbreaking policymaker — Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City Transportation Commissioner — set the stage. Sadik-Khan is more than the architect of NYC’s next-gen bike infrastructure; she’s also the president of NACTO. So, she proudly raised a copy and called the guide a compendium of “everything you need to know to bring world-class bikeways to city streets.”

With American cities constantly struggling to implement cycling facilities that have long been the norm in Europe, NACTO created the guide to speed adoption of bicycling infrastructure by speaking directly to planners and engineers in their specialized technical lingo. By compiling a manual written by American city officials, for American city officials, Sadik-Khan said, the guide will give cash-strapped municipalities the certainty they need to view cycling facilities as proven traffic applications, not costly experiments. By putting all the engineering specs on paper, she added, it will help cities move beyond the rigid design standards that have limited bike infrastructure in the past.

Beyond the ease of reference, the guide breaks new ground by detailing bicycle infrastructure that has yet to be officially embraced by the old guard of transportation engineering institutions. The current versions of the AASHTO Guide to Bikeway Facilities or the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) directly reference only five of the 21 treatments outlined in the NACTO guide, according to the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals. Looking for design guidance on bike boxes? Best practices for protected bike lanes? Thanks to NACTO, now there’s a reference guide for that.

What will that sleek techno-manual mean for the average cyclist? A blossoming of bike infrastructure that will help mainstream bicycling, make streets safer for all users, and finally bring American transportation into the 21st century, said Sadik-Khan. “This is a design guide for streets that work today and in 2050; streets that aren’t designed for 1950,” she said.

Secretary LaHood seconded that emotion. The first words out of his mouth were a direct recommendation that every community use the design guide as a means to promote more and safer cycling. “This is an extraordinary piece of work that’s long overdue,” the secretary said.

True to his reputation, LaHood touted the importance of “providing cycling opportunities that are safe, convenient and available.” The new guide, he said, should serve as a resource in that effort.

“This is a big deal,” he said of the proliferation of urban bicycling. “And this guide is a big deal.”

All the alternatives currently being studied for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement include both commuter rail and bus rapid transit. Advocates are concerned that the state may try to delay construction of the transit components, however. Image: Tappan Zee environmental review website

For nine years, the state of New York has been studying how to replace the aging Tappan Zee Bridge. The bridge, which is more than 50 years old, requires ever more expensive repairs to stay structurally sound and was never intended to carry the volume of traffic that pours over it every day. Since 2002, an extensive public process has led to the development of four alternative plans for the Tappan Zee and the I-287 corridor. Each of them would rebuild the bridge, widen the roadway and include both a new Metro-North commuter rail line and bus rapid transit service across the bridge.

Even after the extensive public process and environmental review, however, those transit components could end up on the scrap heap.

The Obama administration selected the Tappan Zee replacement today as one of 14 major infrastructure projects for federal fast-tracking. A report from Gannett’s Albany bureau refers to the project as “replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge, along with the option of adding bus rapid transit and passenger rail.” Gannett’s report suggests that the state may have decided to build the bridge with room for transit to be added later, rather than constructing the transit components at the same time as the roadway. This would run against the four alternatives that have already been vetted, all of which include transit in the initial construction of the bridge.

If Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering postponing the construction of the transit components, New Yorkers would be left with a major highway expansion that skirted the entire public review process. The governor’s office has not responded to Streetsblog’s inquiry about transit on the Tappan Zee.

Including transit on the bridge has run into some local political resistance lately. This July, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino called for the removal of transit from the plans for the bridge in order to lower costs and speed up construction. As the Tri-State Transportation Campaign reported at the time, the bridge and highway components of the project are projected to cost $8.3 billion. Building the bridge with rail would add $6.7 billion, while the bus system would cost around $1 billion. Astorino’s office told Streetsblog that they hadn’t heard that the transit component had been postponed and that it was too early for any design to have been selected.

Transportation and environmental advocates called for Cuomo to commit to building transit at the same time as the highway is rebuilt, even if only the bus service is installed to start.

“If transit isn’t added now, we worry it never will be,” said Kate Slevin, Tri-State’s executive director.

“This raises concerns that the state may be missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to reduce traffic and greenhouse gas emissions and create a transit backbone for future development in the Hudson Valley.” Slevin noted that past promises to add transit to bridges at a later date — a similar pledge was made for the George Washington Bridge — rarely materialized.

“Clearly, the Tappan Zee Bridge needs replacing — and the sooner, the better. But let’s not forget that a key reason for the bridge’s poor condition is overuse, partly because there are few attractive mass transit alternatives to driving,” added Dan Hendrick, the communications director for the New York League of Conservation Voters. “Commuters and local residents have been calling for mass transit to be added to the bridge for decades, and bus rapid transit represents exactly the kind of smart, sustainable infrastructure investments that will help New York’s environment and economy. We strongly encourage the Obama and Cuomo administrations to sharpen their pencils and ensure that bus rapid transit keeps pace with the roadway replacement on the new Tappan Zee Bridge.”

According to the state’s own website, the transit components are included in order to “help minimize corridor travel delay, reduce travel times, provide travel choices, improve local and regional mobility, foster economic growth and improve air quality.”

Added Slevin: “Since 2002, hundreds of residents, civic leaders, and local elected officials have worked together to develop a list of alternatives for a bridge replacement. There has consistently been support for transit to be included as part of the project, which is why all five options currently being studied in the state environmental review (except the ‘No Build’ alternative) include transit. None of those alternatives studied by the State Department of Transportation included a bridge replacement without a transit component.”

Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported earlier today that the Obama fast-track process seems to favor road maintenance and transit projects rather than wider highways, and that it won’t skirt environmental reviews. If the Tappan Zee project includes a transit component, it’s a good fit for such a program. If Cuomo decides to drop transit, however, the Tappan Zee will be exactly the kind of sprawl-generating boondoggle that Obama is trying to avoid.

The Tappan Zee bridge overhaul is supposed to include transit facilities, but some fear that those may get dropped later on. Photo: SamuelWantman / Wikimedia

Today the administration announced its list of 14 projects, and at first glance, it seems like most of the transportation-related projects take transit, bicycling, and walking into consideration. Some of them will induce sprawl nonetheless, because they expand traffic capacity.

These projects won’t get more federal funds, but they will get federal help in expediting the process. The president promised that this fast-tracking won’t shortchange environmental reviews. The projects were highlighted by officials in several agencies and final selection was done by the White House.

Here’s the list of surface transportation-related projects, most of them recommended by the Department of Transportation:

Tappan Zee Bridge, New York: The bridge is rated structurally deficient as well as functionally obsolete, meaning that in addition to carrying more traffic than it was designed for, the structure is unsafe to carry vehicles. Constant repairs have made the bridge into a money pit, and a significant overhaul could produce long-term savings on maintenance. Notably, this project is not close to “shovel-ready” status, so its selection seems to indicate that the administration had long-term goals in mind, in addition to short-term job creation. There are plans to include a Bus Rapid Transit lane and a commuter rail line on the bridge, as well, but some advocates worry that all that widening could happen without the transit components coming through in the end.

Crenshaw/LAX, California: LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has become a champion for federal loan programs because of his zeal to expand transit in his city. The Crenshaw/LAX project is a cornerstone of his efforts and will provide a critical transit connection to the airport. The city has done a good job attracting federal interest and assistance, and the FTA is already helping them shorten the approval time for the project.

Whittier Bridge, Massachusetts: A conventional bridge along I-95 will be replaced with a wider bridge that will add vehicle lanes as well as bicycle and pedestrian facilities. While the multi-modal treatment is encouraging, the project appears to be a typical highway-widener with a gloss of bicycle- and pedestrian-friendliness added on.

Provo Westside Connector, Utah: This is the only pure road capacity project on the list. It would build a new arterial roadway between the airport and I-15. Its proximity to wetlands has led to some controversy among residents. Some are also concerned that it would increase traffic and sprawl. The mayor has insisted that the dissent won’t change his mind about going forward with the project.

Baltimore Red Line, Maryland: An east-west transit line that’s been in the works for years but was delayed due to competing proposals for BRT or heavy rail. The 14-mile light rail line provides an alternative to driving on I-40, connecting the suburban areas west of Baltimore to downtown, the Inner Harbor, and the Johns Hopkins. There are several outstanding permitting issues, and federal intervention to smooth the process could be key. The White House estimates that administration support can save the project two years, where most of the projects are slated for about six months’ savings.

City Market at O Street, District of Columbia: Every city has big tracts of city land that are fenced off and lying idle, and most of the time you just hope that there’s some plan to do something great with it at some point. One of those big vacant spaces in DC is about to get a $260 million mixed-used development project. They’ll renovate the historic, 120-year-old O Street Market, rebuild a supermarket, and build 400 market-rate apartments, 145 high-end condominiums, a 180-room hotel and 86 units of affordable senior housing. As part of expediting the review process, the federal government will help the District navigate the historic preservation permitting process. This project was recommended by HUD.

There are also projects dealing with aviation, water treatment, subsidized housing, habitat restoration, wind generation, and oil and gas exploration on prairie and grasslands.

The administration says it’s also gathering best practices from all the agencies to develop recommendations to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability of federal permitting and environmental review, “without compromising our responsibility to protect safety, public health, and the environment.” They’re thinking about measures like sector-specific guidelines for timely reviews of permitting applications; encouraging early engagement with stakeholders; coordinating federal reviews with those of state, local and tribal regulatory agencies; and instituting greater oversight of the overall process.

What do you think of this list, Streetsblog readers? Can you share some insight into any of these projects listed above?

Despite innumerable setbacks, progress is still being made on high-speed and intercity rail. Photo credit: Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corporation.

Meanwhile, if you look at USDOT, the well of rail funding just seems to keep on giving.

“They just keep cranking it out,” said Andy Kunz, president of the US High-Speed Rail Association. “Even when you think all the money’s all spent, they pull more money out of a hat.”

It didn’t just come out of a hat, of course. It came from the stimulus money, which is still giving, nearly three years later. Nearly the whole $8 billion allocation for high-speed rail in the stimulus has now been given out, thanks in part to USDOT’s energetic allocations these last few months – including re-allocating money returned by Florida, whose governor decided the state would be better off without high-speed rail.

Yonah Freemark writes in The Transport Politic that the Department of Transportation has been “pushing grants out of the federal government’s hands as quickly as possible so that they can not be rescinded.”

In September alone, the Federal Railroad Administration has approved hundreds of millions of dollars for intercity rail upgrades nationwide: $149 million for New York State, $116 million for New England, $49 million for Texas, $48 million for North Carolina and Virginia, $35 million for the Northeast Corridor, $31 million for Washington State, and $13 million for Oregon, among others. Earlier this summer, hundreds of millions of dollars were appropriated to California and the Northeast. Unless states turn back the money, unlikely considering that the projects have gotten so far and their pro-rail sponsors, these funds cannot be taken back by Congress.

It’s a good strategy. Big pots of money, lying unused, are tempting bait for budget-cutters in Congress — and right now there are a lot of people looking for potential cuts, from the super committee on down. But if there’s just loose change left over, it won’t make much of a dent and probably isn’t worth monkeying with — as much as Republicans would like the chance to say they’re cutting the deficit by cutting money from the high-speed rail “boondoggle.”

Normal, Illinois' multimodal transportation center, funded with a TIGER grant from the Partnership. Image: Normal, Illinois

Through the partnership, the three agencies have coordinated transportation and land use policy to a greater extent than they did before, helping to curb sprawl and promote smart growth. This partnership has taken the federal agencies out of their “stovepipe” mentality and encouraged efficiency and collaboration at an unprecedented level. Why would lawmakers who want to reduce inefficiencies and waste in the federal government want to cut a program that has been so effective at doing just that?

Last fall, Mariia Zimmerman from HUD told Streetsblog that the Partnership has standardized guidelines to make it easier to apply for grants and eliminated some areas of inefficiency, overlap, and even direct contradiction among the agencies. But perhaps more importantly, she said the Partnership has transformed all of HUD, incorporating a focus on sustainability in all of the agency’s work.

A vote of support from the Senate would mean a lot to the Partnership, which saw its funding stripped in the House proposal for next year’s budget. But the Partnership isn’t the only potential casualty of the House plan: Highway and transit funding each get slashed by 34 percent, TIGER and TIGGER grants are cut entirely, high-speed rail gets nothing, the New Starts transit program gets slashed, and Amtrak is left gasping for air. If the Senate subcommittee doesn’t vote to save funding for these programs tomorrow, they have no chance.

See the Smart Growth America action alert for more information.

In October, TIGER II granted $47.6 million to Atlanta for a modern streetcar system. Here, Transportation Secretary LaHood presents the check to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and several area members of Congress. Photo: The White House

It’s TIGER III time. The first round was $1.5 billion. The second round was $600 million. And now, get ready for round three. After surviving countless threats by budget-cutting Republicans in Congress, TIGER is back, granting $527 million for innovative transportation projects.

The “Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery” program lets cities, states and regions compete to show that their project will have a significant impact on the nation

“Through the TIGER program, we can build transportation projects that are critical to America’s economic success and help complete those that might not move forward without this infusion of funding,” said Secretary LaHood in a press statement. “This competition empowers local communities to create jobs and build the transportation networks they need in order to win the future.”

The announcement comes right on time. We found out in April that the money had been appropriated, and knew that a call for applications couldn’t come any sooner than 60 days after that. Applications will be due in the fall.

As we reported earlier, this round of TIGER will be all for capital investments, not planning or project design, and, as in TIGER II, applicants will have to provide at least a 20 percent match.

The TIGER program has been hugely successful, attracting more than 2,500 applications requesting more than $79 billion in the first two rounds. It’s also helped re-shape the discourse around transportation policy, proving the efficacy of competitive grant processes and encouraging a shift away from strictly formula-based funding. By having states and regions compete, the focus shifts to outcomes and performance, which forces decision-makers to use funds more wisely.

According to USDOT, “Projects will be selected based on their ability to contribute to the long-term economic competitiveness of the nation, improve the condition of existing transportation facilities and systems, improve energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improve the safety of U.S. transportation facilities and improve the quality of living and working environments of communities through increased transportation choices and connections. The Department will also focus on projects that are expected to quickly create and preserve jobs and spur rapid increases in economic activity.”

Since March, I’ve been doing a monthly video series called “On the Go with Ray LaHood,” where I respond to questions from the public. I want to thank Streetsblog readers for supplying the bulk of the questions we received this month.

But in my latest “On the Go” video, I was only able to answer a few of them. Since you provided so many great questions, I thought it would be nice to answer a few extra ones right here on Streetsblog.

On my Fast Lane blog, Josef Szende asked, “Does the USDOT consider its job on creating a sustainable transit system to be over once the majority of the country is using electric vehicles?”

Josef, it’s true that I’m excited about Electric Vehicles. They’ve got a lot of potential to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and they really help solve the problem of tailpipe emissions. But many people don’t want to own cars–electric or otherwise. And, with transportation costs as the number two item in most household budgets, we know Americans need access to affordable transit options.

So this DOT is pushing forward to continue growing innovative transit systems across the U.S. For example, our Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has a very popular Urban Circulator program and a successful New Starts program that, on Monday, announced nearly $1.6 billion for 27 projects nationwide.

And earlier this week, to support President Obama’s emphasis on sustainability, the FTA announced more than $100 million in competitive grants for emerging clean fuel and hybrid or electric propulsion technologies for transit buses.

On Facebook, Kyle Merville asks, “How could DOT encourage a more even spread of transportation money to cities? How can the DOT invest in urban infrastructure and modernize it to better serve the citizens who depend on these systems daily?”

Well, Kyle, the answer is that DOT awards a number of grants to America’s urban areas. The FTA has a specific Urbanized Area Formula program for transit capital investments — including the kind of system maintenance you ask about. In addition, FTA also offers a Bus and Bus Facilities program, a Metropolitan and Statewide Planning program, and several other programs that make awards to cities.

We may not have a road program dedicated to urban areas, but that doesn’t mean the state departments of transportation don’t balance urban, suburban, and rural needs appropriately. In fact, many of the largest highway and bridge improvement projects our Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) funds are located in urban areas. The FHWA also has programs to improve air quality, and most of those awards end up in our nation’s cities.

Then we have our very popular TIGER I and TIGER II discretionary programs, where cities and regions applied directly for support. Our competitive TIGER awards funded many creative projects to solve problems across America — multi-use paths, transit systems, road and bridge projects — and many of these were in urban areas. And, if you look at the transportation recommendations the President has sent to Congress for 2012, we’ve made sure to include programs where cities and regional partnerships can come directly to us.

The last question comes from Clarence Eckerson, Jr., who asks, “Would you go for a bike ride with Streetfilms?”

I’m sorry to tell you this, Clarence, but Washington, DC’s Jay Mallin has beaten Streetfilms to the punch on this one. Earlier this month, Jay joined us for a DOT bicycle commute and produced this video. I hope everyone enjoys his video, and, once again, thanks for the terrific questions. Please keep them coming!